WTF? Associated Press Slams Michael Schiavo in Story on Terri's Life?

So I was reading on MSNBC a profile of Terri Schiavo and her life before her heart attack.

It's perfectly innocent until the final 2 paragraphs, when suddenly:

Her friends and family say she was unhappy with Michael. He was controlling, they say, and tried to keep her away from them; he was abusive, they say, and told her that if she ever got fat again, he would leave her.

By this time, she weighed less than 120 pounds, and her ribs were visible.

“I eat, Mom. I eat,” she told her concerned mother.

Her family doubts that she had a real eating disorder; her doctors are not sure whether anorexia or something like it was the root of the potassium imbalance they say probably caused her heart to stop on Feb. 25, 1990, when she collapsed in the hallway outside of her bedroom.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7347035/page/2/

So now what should be a neutral profile on Terri's life has become a hit piece on Michael Schiavo?

I have no idea what went on in that family, but I'm not going to judge. If the AP was going to run that paragraph, they should have at least run something showing the other view. The fact that they blithely declare the Michael Schiavo was abusive and controlling without a rebuttal and without offering any evidence but her family's word - ridiculous.

the Schiavo's should get their money back. The jury certainly thought that the doctor should have diagnosed the bulimia.
AP is just another media whore mouthing the administration's view trying to sway the public's opinion.
EDIT: And the Schindlers did not voice these "doubts" until they weren't given a cut of the malpractice award money.

they just get in the way.

I've been hearing about a dispute over money that caused all the bitterness but I haven't seen a source for it. Can you share? I'd sure like to know more.

There's something very rotten in the state of Schindler...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1697949
post #16 & #25 references the money conflicts with the parents.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7306483/site/newsweek


http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html

My coworker has swallowed the kool aid on this one. If it comes up again, I want to give her a dose of reality.

Schindler supporters bring up Michael Schiavo "suddenly remembering" his wife's wishes after seven years without considering that during those seven years he had hope for her recovery, but they blithely ignore the fact that it took the Schindlers several years to "suddenly remember" that their son-in-law was allegedly abusive.

They have absolutely no credibility in my book.

that is when the fighting started. Michael used all the money he was awarded in taking care of Terri and her family wanted a split of it.

which is worse, since a declaration would need proof to back up charge.

Throwing out garbage with the added, "sources say" and "some people say" is yellow journalism

Not AP. I'm pretty disappointed by them.

Most co-dependant families usually are in denial that there is a problem. That's a big part of what makes it a problem.

They thought she was communicating, too. They thought she could get better. They were either totally out of touch with reality or lying.

The lying was lying out of ignorance, not out of intent to deceive. Lying with intent would have required knowledge of the subject matter, which clearly they did not have.

This family had a mix of a few problems.

Codependence - classical enabling - greed - disacociative tendencies

Last first - Disacosiative tendencies - They aren't very well connected with reality, not when they are willing to take the answers from a number of quacks who are little more than snake oil salesmen selling hope.

Dr. Cheshire has been admonished for making a diagnosis based upon his own statement that he didn't bother to use proper medical proceedures to diagnose her.

Dr. Frist used his expertise as a cardiologist after watching a highly edited video.

These nurses who made these wild claims have affectively made claims that an entire hospice would have to be in on a very elaborate deception that breaks countless federal and (I'm sure) state laws.

Where as they have argued against the specialists and even someone Jeb Bush had the courts cherry pick who still came onto Michael's side.

GREED - They only began their little arguemtn shortly after Michael won the initial lawsuit, right after he'd transfered the 700,000 into a trust that was designated to oversee Terri's care. First sueing for custody under the sudden claims of abuse meer months after he won the suit. They haven't stopped since then, fighting for custody in every way they could, up to the point in 1997 when he decided to pull the plug where they do a counter point saying they wanted to take care of her.

They failed to mention that they'd tried to take care of her before, found themselves unable to and sent her back to a skilled nursing facility.

Classical Enabling and Codependence- The little quote about Mrs. Schindler asking her daughter if she's getting enough to eat. Their daughter was Bulemic, when she developed and what factors enabled her to develope that awful wasting disease doesn't make it any less common than the others who suffer from the same disease/disorder. Her family shows the classical co-dependence signs including reinforcing each other's stories and magnifying outragious claims. Sugh as her 'begging for food' but being unwilling to even try to sneak a tape recorder in even though they'd already ignored a judges orders before by videotaping her in 2001 and 2002. Everyone in a healthy family has a small level of codependence, but to do it to the level of which it becomes so overblown that this family protects each other and their secrets, even when the truth is known, such as that they accuse him of having abused her, that she was miserable and that he caused their daughter's heart attack and bulemic condition. These techniques are refered to as 'enforced denial' or denial enforced by the demand that they do the 'nothing's wrong' dance rather than admit that they might not have been perfect.

In other words, the Schindlers are a typical dysfunctional American family.

the eating habits/wt change/behaviors of her daughter.

and because he wasn't out there, spreading and putting out for their miserable cameras and so-called "journalists," the pigs of the MSM will now demonize and then crucify (see how nicely I pulled together the two extremes of christianity there?) Mr. Schiavo.

Boy, with those fuckers, it's "My way or the highway" every single time, and they'll kiss the asses of the manipulative fuckwits who protested and did everything they could to get their faces on TV and their inane 'prayers' heard, but they'll never stop to consider that a man fought a couple of crazed, vengeful idiots for years in order to honor his wife's wishes.

Just when I think it can't get any worse, it does.

Now watch Tom DeWorstLayIEverHad wiggle out of all of this.

I am so totally disgusted with my country ...................

I was upstairs in the bedroom watching the news. He heard me shout, "It worked the way it was supposed to, you bottom-feeding cretin!" before storming down the stairway. He just laughed a little and said, "DeLay on the news?"

....... to appear on TV now suggests that he's gonna try to bully and bluster his way through all of this.

Oh, lord, how I despise them .................

Keep yelling, Left..............

I would have got a restraining order against these people a long time ago.

seem to hear nowadays. It has been/is/will be disgusting until the media is finally called out on it. I'm listening to David Gregory in for Tweety on Hardball; he's trying to be balanced. But the media has a long way to go before most of us have any legitimate faith in what we hear from most forms of corporate media.
As drained and exhausted as Mr. Schiavo might be, I'd applaud him for suing some of these people for defamation of character.

morons will believe you..I have heard nothing but good about him and he has been there for her all the way..his in-laws should be ashamed of themselves...

they need to give NAMES. I want specific quotes from specific people. And then I want to see Michael Schiavo sue the crap out of them for slander.

Since Mr. Schiavo's considered a "public figure," people can pretty much say what they want about him. That sucks, but that's how the law stands right now.

I'd love to see him go after Randall Terry, though, and some of those fucking Catholic priests. The nerve of those malicious little virgins. The nerve...........

it makes a difference whether he put himself in the public eye or whether he entered the public eye because of an event like this. I don't think he'd be considered a public figure. At least if I remember my classes correctly when I was studying journalism. It's been over a decade so I can't promise I remember correctly.

That's why I'd like to see him take on one of these bastards.

integrity and obvious bias in the matter by printing a one-sided column.

Finish the sentence -- "they say".

He probably was abusive. The idea that people feel the need to make Michael Shiavo a saint just because he has the right to pull the plug is absurd.

They say it as though they are the final authority. I'm not saying he was not. He may have been. I did not know the family and I don't know what their situation was. But for them to denounce Michael Schiavo and cite heresay without backing it up with something more firm than heresay is extremely irresposible.

I'm sure Michael Schiavo and his friends would dispute their retelling. They should print what Terri's family and some of her friends think about him being abusive, but they should also print something to counter that. What they did showed incredible bias.

And what gives you the right to declare that he WAS abusive? Did you know the family? I don't. I'm not going to pretend to know. I will say that I have my doubts - the Schindlers were very close to Schiavo after the accident and he stayed and lived with them for a few years afterward. They encouraged him to date other women and he introduced them to many of his dates. That doesn't sound to me like something parents would have done to a son-in-law they felt abused their daughter and led to her accident. But like I said - I don't pretend to know what happened and maybe he was abusive. Maybe he was not. But for the AP to simply present one side and not even give Michael Schiavo's side a rebuttal is extremely irresponsible.

I am feeling less than devastated that MS is getting a little of the same treatment.
It takes two to cause a family disfunction of this proportion. I don't blithly accept either version of the truth.

The court record backs up every point of contention to the husband's view. Every point. 24 courts were wrong? And, the parents weren't misguided? Because you say so?
The Professor

this is merely a small piece of the actually unheard "other view." And I'm glad at last to read it.

Michael Schiavo has declared that he's going to cremate Terri's remains and then inter them in an "undisclosed location" in Pennsylvania. All this is totally counter to her parents wishes. Yeah, yeah, the COURTS gave him permission to do with her whatever he damn well pleases. That doesn't make it right, ethical, moral, decent, humane. I want to see people who believe Michael Schiavo is a good guy, a "saint" at least one DUer has called him, defend this.

You don't use children as pawns in divorce (as many men do, as well as some women -- tho women get charged with it often when they're mostly just protecting the kids from abusive dads), and you don't use funeral arrangements and a dead woman's remains to punish meddling, bothersome, annoying parents. It's controlling and sick om Michael's prt, and it's just plain wrong.

In my view, none of it can be defended. He can't defend a private ceremony just to keep them out, and he CERTAINLY can't defend hiding her ashes. Ridiculous. Schiavo has shown his true colors with this horrible move, and they very much match the mini-profile in the OP.

The girl is dead. It's his turn to step up to the plate put the past behind him. And he blew it.

AFAIAC, regardless of his rights in the matter, he is a worthless POS. :thumbsup:

The MSM has been solidly behind the parents-- or rather, solidly behind the forces that have sided with the parents, which just happen to be the forces the MSM has been solidly behind all along, and you know who they are.

And if I were Michael Schiavo, I'd be pretty unhinged with anger at the parents right about now. The fact that he can speak in coherent English sentences about them and about his plans, rather than froth at the mouth, suggests that he's a remarkably decent human being.

I think some very pointedly worded demand letters are in order.